Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?

Go see a therapist.

I just keep the 'busy' hours for other people. Thankfully WFH has made it easy. Basically 11AM-7PM are for other people to interrupt me, and for calls. I stay only half-engaged with chats and emails so it doesn't cost in me my cognitive budget and I get a lot of stuff done within the household. Either 7AM-11AM or 7PM-11PM, depending on circumstances, I do work. You know, the 15 minutes of real actual work mentioned in Office space. This is when other people are away and I get to focus. Thankfully my company culture is good and nature of my job allows me to only sit and mash keyboard couple hours a week or so, rest is thinking, or light research.

Overall, I don't engage with $JOB more than 8 hours on any given day and never on a weekend. It works for me, and my boss nor team have complained so far. I'm not sure how long the party will last, though.

There is no quick and easy solution to this. You just have to remember that the interruption is not aware of your state of mind, and also that a bad response (from you) will probably cause a greater degree of interruption.

So be kind, handle the interruption politely and happily, remind the interrupter that you're working and then take measures so that it is more difficult for you to be interrupted in the future.

I would write the things that are in my mind which are blocking me from doing something else (like sleeping). When working on personal projects I try to plan all the steps I need to make and split them into very small tasks. Then if I’m interrupted during one task I can quickly come back by reading the description.

If there’s something blocking my progress in a task, I write comments below the task’s card (using whatever kanban software). Then if I leave it to do something else, I’ll be able to replicate the last state in my head by reading the comments

It's very situation-dependent, so here are a few things I've done:

1. In a work situation where I'm relatively senior, I've proactively communicated that I like minimally-interrupting notifications (email>slack>IRL). Even when someone taps me on the shoulder, they're a little sheepish about it, and I can request 30 seconds to jot down a note about where I left off. I also just feel more in control of the situation.

2. At home, I keep a note of the interruptions and talk to my wife about the overall issue after the 'crisis' has passed.

3. When I feel like I can't get something out of my head, I use Siri to write a reminder. I use https://rememberthemilk.com/ but almost anything will work. A poorly thought-out, awkward, run on sentence for the task title, and then if I have more thoughts bursting outof me, I can add those as notes over the course of the day. What's important to realize is that you'll have to 'groom' the task before you can actually do it, but getting it off your chest is priority #1, and if you're supposed to be mostly doing something els eyou won't have time for that in the moment.

More generally, it's all about insisting on 30 seconds to record some placeholder, even if it feels impolite to whoever is interrupting you. I'm 99.9% sure this will not get you fired, and it's worth whatever tiny annoyance it might give them - they should share the annoyance burden of the situation after all! In all likelihood, just having that shred of control will help you feel a ton better and potentially make people think twice about whether they need to tap you on the shoulder in the first place

Good question.

Before you consider the various answers offered here, consider that attention is the key executive function of consciousness, and the ability to marshall it is a core aspect of what we call “self”.

Everyone is different, in ways that we cannot always control, or even perceive.

When you consider other people’s methods, be aware that your attention mechanisms may work differently and respond differently, whether you like it and want it that way or not.

“Attention” is a hardware module that comes with no instruction booklet.

I write.

for work I can do alone, I sometimes create dedicated no interupption periods. typically no longer than a hour

I will sometimes, depending on the level of concentration, close all communication apps, phone on silent and lock doors.

for diffcult work with other people, that gets complex, I'll keep meetings to one or two attendees.

I also do a brain dump and write down in notepad, my problems and to do stuff, then prioritise the list

I'm sincerely sorry if this answer doesn't help and it's not meant to be arch or sarcastic. But I have found that the more I like the work I am doing, the less interruptions bother me. I am fortunate to work from home, but it means many more such incidents than an office job.

Obviously I would like to be left alone while working, but I have handicapped and mentally ill people to care for my life is acutely interrupt-driven. My work is immensely enjoyable so I can recover pretty fast most of the time.

In the days I did work in an office, I found that I got an enormous amount of work done on evenings, weekends, or very early mornings. This required having a spouse who understood that work was important because it supported both of us.

One thing that helps me to focus on the task at hand is using Promodoro timers: 25 minutes focussed work, then 5 minutes break.

More generally, if distractions are bothering you or are making you nervous, I would recommend meditation. Meditation is the practice of focussing on the present. Try the waking up app (https://wakingup.com/), it is a good reason-based introduction to the practice and theory of meditation.

Plan the work and environment very well to avoid interruptions. Still if it comes, welcome the interruption, postpone addressing it if you can, address it if can't be missed. But most important thing is to don't react to it happening, so you can switch back to your tasks again with same rigor.

Therapy. For real. In some cultures it's not welcome, but it affects personal development enormously. It's the best investment in your life. Not that you'll solve all your problems, however you'll learn to analyze your problems and learn to find root causes to fight with, instead of symptoms. Being here and now is not easy. You may be anxious, tired, may have some mild disorders, obsessions you don't even know about.

Yes, I do also feel very frustrated when I have to stop working on something before it is finished, specially if it's that long debugging session and you have all in your head, but you just have to stop and go do something else.

Talking specifically about code, TDD really helped me, seriously, the red-green loop makes me comfortable to stop any time the tests are green, then I commit, which means that I also have very small commits which also help me with the interruptions once I'm back.

To not miss what I was thinking ahead, I always to keep a todo list (I just use Notes) of everything that comes to mind that I still need to fix or code which I postponed from the current commit, so I don't loose track while at the same time it frees me to focus on a specific thing at a time.

Now sometimes this does not apply, sometimes you just need long, deep and uninterrupted focus, like thinking about the perfect abstraction for something, or those long debugging sessions I mentioned. For those, I try to be sure to block some time or I don't even start it on that day

It seems like an anxiety, especially this part: “events coming up that make me nervous”. I successfully let go of huge parts of it with CBT. And additionally…

without loosing progress?

I always write down both the plan and the progress. For strategic plans and sudden realizations I’m using personal Trello. For at-the-moment tactics I just have a piece of paper and few pens on my desk. Circles and text and arrows and notes, you know. And somewhere in the middle there is always TODO.txt or a variant of `grep -r "TODO\|FIXME\|XXX" .`. Which of the latter two I’m using depends on whether I want to draw a map and navigate it (research-mode) or to set a short-term plan (do-it-mode).

For upcoming events that depend on my action, I make sure to plan beforehand with the ios builtin reminder app and then fully rely on it. If these don’t depend on me (someone to arrive in a hour or maybe four), I just learned to not give a fuck until it happens with CBT, and then I spend a minute to write down all the relevant progress/action/situation info to pick up later.

If I don’t write it down, it’s not worth it, and vice versa.

I organize my life around not being interrupted. Work from home, respond to messages when I get to it.

When I have an idea or thought that might interrupt, I write it down quickly on an ideas board or my notes for later and discard the thought.

When I get tired I sleep. When I'm working on something I am in a flow state. When I feel myself leaving a flow state (or bored?) I take a break. Progress is unpredictable. There is no such thing as finished, only ongoing or back burner or dead.

I work remotely, so I just live my life and hang around online during business hours (and sometimes nap) and then use the late evening hours to churn out work. I do not like the split between work and life at all. Better to weave it all together as I see fit. 3 days of work can easily be 3 hours if I get those 3 hours uninterrupted rather than every hour punctuated by meetings or some other dev or even just needing to check that ping.

Either that or just ignore the interruptions. Slack can be silenced, as can phones. No need to always tolerate them.

I used to think of tasks/todos as burning buildings and I had to prioritize which family to save. Now I instead think of tasks as balls, where most balls are made of rubber, so i can just drop them as needed, it no longer feels like someone is dying just because i dropped something, then several weeks later when i go through the todo list i relentlessly remove tasks that are not a must have, all nice to have are removed, and i often find that the tasks i dropped was not really important and many are no longer needed

So the tasks/todos are rubber balls and its ok to drop them. And do not worry about losing them. If they are important they will bounce back at you. There are only a few balls that are made of glass.

I use sticky notes and a pinboard like others with a twist: sticky notes are placed on paper, not directly on the board. Each sheet of paper works like a room, contextual frame for notes. Move paper to top to switch context. Doing the same in computer screen doesn't work as well.

This has become a huge part of my life since having kids. They're wonderful, and they need a lot of attention, which I'm usually happy to give them. But they do often interrupt me, and that makes it hard to get into anything deep or technical while they're around. I cope by waking up very early each morning (5 AM) so I can pursue my own interests for a few hours without the threat of interruption.

Journal keeping. For me, the key is letting those thoughts out. It may just be something eating away at me, sometimes it's just a confusing behavior.

Journaling helps you think. It makes you feel like someone is listening (I write those in a way that I am talking to someone, who is just there to listen, and not give feedback). I let everything out, it just feels better, and then I am able to focus more on the work. I am good at patterns, so I identify what makes me tick, what makes me focus, and then it's a matter of doing things which help you and avoid those which don't. Possibly a lot of iteration involved.

P.S. I have tried therapy, but the thing they tried to tell me was that everyone loves me, and people want me and value me in their life. My frustrations were never coming from that unresolved issue. I just felt helpless or nervous about lack of control over my activities, and journaling helped me get to that point, while therapy was useless.

I think you got two different things mixed there.

One is being interrupted, the other is being distracted. Being interrupted is external, while being distracted is internal.

So which one is it you're having problems with?

Personally, I have come to accept that there will be interruptions. Colleagues asking for help, someone asking a question, some boss calling an unexpected meeting, my mother phoning or whatever. Some of these you can avoid; like you could have a rule to always communicate meetings in advance. But at least a part of these will be unavoidable. How many depends on particular circumstances; e.g. being a senior engineer in a mostly junior group means you were specifically hired to be interrupted to a considerable extent.

One thing that sometimes helps me with interruptions is using 5-10 seconds. That is, when someone comes I just ask for 10 seconds, I make a gesture or simply say "10 seconds" or whatever, and then proceed to sort of "unload". I write down the precise point I am at and the exact upcoming action I was going to take.

On the matter of distractions, it depends a lot more on yourself and the success of anything you try will be very dependent on how you are.

In this front, one thing I do is scheduling. I want/need to do X... but I have to do Y now. So, I slot it into an appropriate time. e.g. "This weekend I want to make progress on that personal project". So "this weekend". This means: a. not now, and b. I have sort of secured a time for it, I don't have to worry about it because it has an assigned place.

Again, in this area what works for others may not work for you. But also, as someone has already mentioned, if you can't manage to learn how to do this on your own, reaching out to a therapist or other professional help is a valid solution. They may provide more specific tools and techniques.

Hardly any projects can be finished in a single sitting. You should have a plan and focus on individual tasks, then you'll always have something to finish and be happy about.

I find it really annoying to be interrupted at work, and remote work has enabled me to regain my focus.

I try to focus on the reason, write it down, test it for a while, if knowing it is effective I add it to a list. After a few months, you will have like 20 reasons that summarizes why you get stuck in this period in your life.